The Host (2006)

Originally Written

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Last time I checked monster movies where supposed to follow a few simple rules: have lots of action, lots of monster, and a short run-time. The Host doesn't follow any of those rules, in fact it does exactly the opposite and manages to wear out it's welcome, as it bores me to tears with useless dialogue and repetitive scenes.

I guess the moral of the story is, don't pour your formaldehyde down the sink or you'll create a monster that will end up terrorizing your city and eating half your population. In terms of mutation The Host creature beats the pants off Mr. Burns's three-eyed fish. The creature starts its attack on the city of Seoul, quickly grabbing and devouring everyone in its path, including a local store owners dim witted son's daughter. The rest of the film focuses on the Park family as they attempt to rescue the girl, whom they believe is still alive somewhere in the depths of the cities sewer system.

The Host is a beautiful looking film, if your inclined to check this one out do so in high definition and you won't be disappointed in the clear crisp picture quality. As for the the film itself, The Host doesn't seem to be to sure what type of film it really wants to be, but one thing is clear, it's definitely not a horror. Nothing in this film is remotely scary so if that's your motivation for watching this look somewhere else. If anything The Host is more a B-comedy, at least the severe and horrible overacting lends itself to that genre. At times The Host attempts to be a drama with family issues between the Park's consistently thrown in for some sort of pointless depth, which only succeeds in dragging the story out and nothing more.

To call The Host a monster movie is almost an insult to the genre. The creature sees very limited focus in the film and usually it's a scene of it regurgitating a recently devoured meal into the depths of the sewer. The emotional struggle of the Park family seems to be more important to the film than the creature ever is; so when did creature features start becoming family dramas? Simply put The Host is a Korean soap opera dressed up to look like a creature feature. The film focuses way too much time on the physical and emotional pain of the characters who I kept hoping the creature would hurry up and eat so I wouldn't be forced to set through anymore lame attempts at depth in a film that shouldn't require any. Besides, the acting was so over-the-top and the script so awful, that no depth to the story at all, would have been better than what it tries to force down your throat.

Overall, at two hours long The Host quickly becomes boring, repetitive, stale and pointless. Call me old school, but whatever happened to the creature features whose main goal was destruction, action, special effects and a straight to the point story? The Host attempts to pull that off but again seemed more interested in focusing on the boring main characters than it did the creature, which is the whole reason people watch these films in the first place. I must admit I didn't expect to love this film, but I expected to have a little fun with it rather than feel quite happy when it was finally over.

4/10